I had never actually seen any of the "Ma and Pa Kettle" movies, but I did read "The Egg And I" way back in high school, so I was unprepared for the basically pleasant and humane tone of the movie (based on the book, I was expecting something closer to "God's Little Acre"). The Kettles as described in the book were pretty irritating and shiftless characters...but the filmmakers wisely de-emphasized the shiftless and trashiness of the originals in favor of something more like "The Beverly Hillbillies".
I was impressed with the two leads and the way they handled themselves in front of the camera, especially Percy Kildredge. He underplayed and understated Pa's essentially lazy nature and made him more more sympathetic and funny than I had expected. Ray Collins also gave the scenes he appeared in a nice shot of energy and optimism.
As for the actual plot...well, it marks time. You can't really change the basic setup for a series like this (hence the Kettles move back to the farm they moved out of previously) so this time around it's a tempest in a teapot concerning the mother-in-law's snooty ideas about child raising versus the salt-of-the-earth common wisdom of the hill folk, plus a plot MacGuffin about uranium and radioactive overalls to fill in some extra time.There are some pretty decent - if unsurprising -sight gags (various doors and gates and coops etc collapsing of age and neglect while Pa remarks "I'll get around to fixing that")and a reasonably funny pair of sequences at the end involving chasing and fleeing from a train.
This is product and filler, pure and simple, but not a bad way to spend some time if all you want is cinematic pablum.
I was impressed with the two leads and the way they handled themselves in front of the camera, especially Percy Kildredge. He underplayed and understated Pa's essentially lazy nature and made him more more sympathetic and funny than I had expected. Ray Collins also gave the scenes he appeared in a nice shot of energy and optimism.
As for the actual plot...well, it marks time. You can't really change the basic setup for a series like this (hence the Kettles move back to the farm they moved out of previously) so this time around it's a tempest in a teapot concerning the mother-in-law's snooty ideas about child raising versus the salt-of-the-earth common wisdom of the hill folk, plus a plot MacGuffin about uranium and radioactive overalls to fill in some extra time.There are some pretty decent - if unsurprising -sight gags (various doors and gates and coops etc collapsing of age and neglect while Pa remarks "I'll get around to fixing that")and a reasonably funny pair of sequences at the end involving chasing and fleeing from a train.
This is product and filler, pure and simple, but not a bad way to spend some time if all you want is cinematic pablum.